seeline

No, not really. Sorry for the misunderstanding. the thread's title is very misleading, then.

Jim, I don't understand all the white people/post-Big Chill stuff in this context. I thought we were trying to talk about certain kinds of African music and blues.... as for the quote being beyond surreal, I can see that, although it's been a big question (back and forth) for some years now in other circles... like I mentioned earlier, the information on Malian music (and interview with Vieux Farka Toure) on the Afropop Worldwide site (www.afropop.org) might go some way toward making that clearer... at this point, I'm really not sure. The CSM piece is repeating a lot of canards that have been around since Ali Farka Toure started touring in Europe (and, once, in the US) and making pronouncements about people like JL Hooker to the Western press. I used to cover this music (African, not blues) and have had my own struggles with making sense out of the whole problem, so that's one of the places I'm coming from. the "blues is African music" thing showed up on a lot of press releases, and probably still does. I felt it was really important to learn more and not misrepresent the artists and music in question (in print). Maybe that clarifies some of what I've been trying to say - or not, as the case may be. Either way, I'm more than happy to talk about music, but the other kinds of things you're raising, not so much. Seems like that aspect of your posts is more political than anything else (just my impression). cheers, e. Edited to add: video of some Tuareg from northern Mali dancing the takamba, which is referenced in the CSM article ... I *think* this is Tartit (a women's ensemble), but I'm not 100% sure.

i think there's a big difference between saying "These things have the same source" and "These things are the same." 1st cousins are very closely related, but they're not identical twins. it could be that i'm misunderstanding the context of quotes like these, too... The Western press all too often called AFT "the John Lee Hooker of Africa," which is very inaccurate. If AFT got fed up with that kind of comparison, well... I can scarcely blame him! The catch is that earlier in his career, he professed a lot of admiration for Hooker.

Still, I think there's a lot of validity in wanting to find out where things came from, especially when those things are so basic to our humanity - like music, dance, etc. And our innate curiosity is going to propel us on that search.

part of the irony here is that Africans have been listening to - and buying - recordings from all over the world since not long after HMV and other record companies opened sales offices in Africa. But we have not been listening to their music, until very recently, at least. Which is why Ali Farka Toure's claims that John Lee Hooker had nothing to teach him (AFT) because all of Hooker's music came from Africa anyway... kind of make me think that AFT had a very inflated idea of himself, and not nearly as much respect for people like Hooker as he should have. I don't have exact quotes, but I can easily find them if anyone's interested.

Well according to Bobby McFerrin the whole world is hard wired to use the pentatonic scale: http://www.ted.com/talks/ bobby_mcferrin_hacks_your_brain_with_music.html Thanks for the link to that - I love it! I've followed this thread and felt like I should stay out of it, but may I offer this: The music of Africa did not survive the Middle Passage, but African attitudes/approaches to making music did. Agreed.

I think she's dug deep into Malian music because she's in Paris and has easy access to music - and musicians - from all over what used to be French W. Africa. The whole thing is pretty amazing in that she seems to just "get" their music. Lots of different styles and regions represented on the disc, btw. (I just posted another few links to vids above.) and they get her music, too. I've heard other recordings with American jazz musicians and W. African musicians, but never any that work like this one does. I guess one of the best analogies I can come up with is that black American music and African music are 1st cousins.

Heard this? Bridgewater went to Mali and recorded with Malian musicians. The album hasn't gotten nearly the acclaim that it ought to. Here's a track from the album - with vocalist Ami Sacko and her husband Bassekou Kouyate and his group, Ngoni ba. (The last are currently touring with Béla Fleck.) It's a killer disc! Video from one of her tours: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUCOU9vteCA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYX-BqpWBY0&feature=fvw - not to be too pedantic about it, but whoever subtitled the video "mbalax" is wrong. The Mag. Goldberg can explain that far better than I ever could.

you're just bsing now - who said those scales and tunings *didn't* come from Africa? Not me. i'm not even sure what your point is... I think we actually agree on most everything, and that, as has been suggested above, this is more about semantics than anything else.

Look, I've been involved in music history stuff for a long time... and i wish it was a simple connect-the-dots kind of thing with Africa and here. But it just isn't. Too much time has gone by, people have developed their own cultures and music here *and* there. Take jazz, for example - developed in the US, not Africa. And to this day, relatively few Africans play jazz (outside of southern Africa in general and in S. Africa itself). It's never made the dent in W. Africa that Cuban music did, or that calypso did, or that James Brown did. I think black American achievements in all fields are, first and foremost, American. That (obviously) includes black American music, like the blues. It's equally true of music from Cuba and Brazil, although in both cases, slavery lasted longer than here, and also in both cases, African people continued to arrive in those countries long after the US and the British Empire outlawed the slave trade. I'm a big fan of Julie Dash's film Daughters of the Dust, which is set in the Georgia Sea Islands at the beginning of the 20th century and is largely about the old ways (all the very direct Africanisms) dying out as younger generations become more and more assimilated. Julie Dash is black, so it's not as if she's commenting from outside the continuum in the way some of us (you, me) are, as white folks. * Also - very, very important point: African religions - and most African musical instruments - were suppressed here in the US in a way that just didn't happen in Brazil, Cuba and many other Caribbean and Latin American countries. People were able to hold a dual allegiance, with the saints standing in for the gods "from home." That didn't happen much outside of Catholic countries (and, of course, New Orleans). The US and Canada are very different cultural matrices, and what developed out of the blending of many cultures here is profoundly different than what happened in other parts of the W. hemisphere. I'm not making any of this up; and I don't think I'm trying to make a distinction here because I'm white. (Though if anyone wants to believe that, they can.) I think that's true of The Magnificent Goldberg as well, although I wouldn't want to presume to speak for him.

??? No, they're talking about pentatonic scales (also guitar tunings) in a number of different kinds of music from northern Mali and "this sounds like that, so it must be the same thing." We exported the steel-stringed guitar to Africa... It's now a griot instrument in Mali, although many griots still play the ngoni lute, which *is*n one of the ancestors of the modern banjo. Jim, I don't get why you're ranting. I agree with a lot of what both Vieux and his father have to say, but not with everything. There *is* a big difference between here and W. Africa; take a trip and you'll see for yourself. I think it's pretty hard for many African Americans when they run up against various African cultures (either there or here), because there are so many cultural differences. Just sayin', after having been an ESL tutor, talked to more than a few people who've experienced the differences, and also having a dedicated interest in W. African music (especially percussion music from Mali and parts of Guinea). I think you're not getting the points I'm attempting to make, so I'll let it drop, OK?

No worries. And hey, i really like Vieux Farka's music, so there you go. And... I think what both Vieux and AFT were right about is that there are some pronounced similarities between certain things about certain styles of music from their country 9and neighboring countries) and certain things here. But to say that they're exactly the same - well, there's the rub. I think both AFT and Vieux believe(d) in what they're saying, and that's all well and good, but AFT used to say things like "John Lee Hooker has nothing to teach me," which is where you more or less have to start lifting your feet, imo. I wish we could trace everything in US music history in painstaking detail, but that's not possible. I would *love* to see this particular conundrum solved! And I'm sure many other kinds of song lyrics (other that what I mentioned above) are similar - life is life, after all, and there are major themes that we all write and sing and talk about, everywhere on the planet. But our ways of expressing those things can vary lots, even within groups of people who live in close proximity to each other. just my thoughts, nothing written in stone in any way at all!

I've never used that word in my life, not do I intend to! The Christian Science Monitor, on the other hand, hey, they're liable to do anything! Well, it's not the CSM, it's Vieux Farka Toure and his late father Ali Farka Toure who are making that claim... There *is* some validity to what Vieux is saying; I'd never deny that. But both men have used the "blues came from Africa" line to sell their music outside of W. Africa. They'd never be able to put that one over with the folks in either Timbuktu or Bamako! I know I sound like a cynic, but some of their reasoning is a little circular. (imo, at least.)

But that presupposes that the subjects people address in lyrics are the same. Griot songs in W. Africa have no equivalent here. Nobody here is singing about the Mali or Songhai Empires, unless they're African immigrants. Nobody here sings about Sunjata (or Sundiata, or any number of other spellings), the legendary founder of the Mali Empire. They just don't - unless they're griots from W. Africa who have either moved to this country or are on tour here. ditto for what Tuareg musicians sing about (check for Tinawiren, who've gained a lof of popularity in the US despite the fact that they sing in their own Berber dialect). But people who are singing ritual music for santeria ceremonies *are* singing pretty much what's sung for the spirits and deities (orishas) over in Nigeria and parts of Benin. It's a whole different ballgame. * About "blues/jazz griot," someone at The Other Place took great exception to my pointing out that our use of the word "griot" has very little to do with what African griots actually do, and who they are. That person also claimed that the blues is African music - as in, it came from Africa, not that it was developed here in the US. (My responses had a great deal to do with my being given the boot...) At any rate, I'm a bit touchy about the misuse of the term.

I think the point about "language" staying intact - as if Africans and people of African descent lived in a vacuum here - is also very erroneous, and on a par with assuming that Africa is some kind of museum (lacking living, changing cultures). Not saying that to bug you, JS, just speaking in general. Now if we can all hold off from using the phrase "blues griot" (or "jazz griot"), I'll be very happy indeed.

Well, Charleston was hardly the only active slave port in the English-speaking part of the Western Hemisphere, but other than that, I very much agree. (On the music, etc.) Just because someone uses a pentatonic scale or tuning does not mean that they're playing "blues" by default. The "blues came from Mali" and "desert blues" etc. etc. etc. slogans are just that - promotional stuff. Was/is there influence from W. Africa on various kinds of African american music? Sure! (Would be crazy to deny it.) did instruments cross the Atlantic? Definitely. But this wholesale re-appropriation of African cultures to suit the purposes of reductionists over here just annoys the hell out of me. for one, people who do it seem to ignore the fact that W. Africa (and everywhere else in the world) have had 400+ years of cultural development since the slave trade started. And they also ignore the fact that people from many, many parts of Africa were thrown together, here in what's now the US plus all the rest of the Western Hemisphere. Some cultures won out (cf. the predominance of Yoruba and Congo-based religions in Brazil, Cuba and - now - here in the US. There were many W. African Muslim slaves in the Western hemisphere, but the practice of the religion largely died off - check Sylviane A. Diouf's book on this, Servants of Allah, for starters...) And then there's the fact that HMV was selling records of all kinds of music throughout Africa... which is how so many African musicians of a certain age (most of them gone now) came to be influenced by Cuban music. (Just one of many, many examples.) I think a lot of the people who write screeds like the one Jim linked to are assuming that African countries and cultures exist in some kind of vacuum, isolated from the rest of the world. There are lots of problems with these big, generalist proclamations. I think sources like www.afropop.org have lots more reliable material in their archives, easily available to anyone who chooses to visit the site. Edited to add: MG, I'm not sure there re. the Tuareg being "white." Lots of them are very dark-skinned. They are Berber, though. But... they're on the old caravan routes. And slaves were taken north, to the Maghreb., after all. (Again, though, many were Bambara.)

The sun never sets on the British umpire!

I think you wandered into the Museum of Soviet Calculators (cosmonaut annex) by mistake.

Do the techs at Chandos say *why* this is happening? From what you're describing, it sounds like something is wrong with the way the files are encoded, though not having seen their reply (and not having run into the problem myself), I'm just guessing. Are they MP3s, or are the Chandos audio files in some other format?

That's true for me as well, Bev. But it also seems beside the point to go on and on about how awful AAJ and/or its management are... for me, at least. (There are certain givens there, and no amount of venting is going to change them.)

Yes, I agree. Sorry for letting this thread trigger some unpleasant memories! I've got my share of unpleasant memories from there, but I don't think there's much point in discussing them. One of the ironies of it all: that "gang" is largely gone from the AAJ board, and those who remain have been forced (finally) to tone it down.

Very true. (Though I agree with kenny weir!)

I really haven't had a chance to get to listen to the music from this BFT in the way I'd like (in order to make semi-coherent comments on the discussion thread...), but I want to say that my hat's off to you for this one, jeffcrom! I'm in love with the older material especially. Tk. one has some very close analogues in Brazilian choro from the same time period, I think... and I wondered about some of the guitars used, so am very glad to see the list of instruments. (am a fan of harp guitar; mandolin, too - though my fancy for that latter came by way of the Brazilian bandolim, which is larger and more cittern-like.)

i'm in - would prefer a download, if possible. (sorry I've been AWOL; haven't really had much time to get to jeffcrom's BFT 71, although what I've heard, I've loved!)

I can't help with dating - but I agree, he was a fantastic guitarist and I would love to hear more of his work!